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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27096760">you never said your goodbyes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0talcha0s/pseuds/t0talcha0s'>t0talcha0s</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hunter X Hunter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Hints at a Tserriednich Confrontation but nothing big, Just a Quick and Dirty Little Story About Kurapika and Pairo and Tserriednich, Kurapika Reflections, Poor Boy is Consumed, Post-Anime, Vignettes, kurta traditions</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-09 03:55:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,491</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27096760</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0talcha0s/pseuds/t0talcha0s</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"When you return” Pairo had said as Kurapika was set to begin his journey out of Kurta territory, “I'll have just one question. 'Was it fun?' I'll ask that, so that you have to have such a journey such that you can answer 'Yes' from the bottom of your heart.”</p><p>When Kurapika thinks back to the moment, the not-goodbye he spent with Pairo, he finds himself stuck on the lack of finality. Pairo had never pictured a future where they didn’t survive.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kurapika &amp; Pairo (Hunter X Hunter), Kurapika/Pairo (Hunter X Hunter)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>you never said your goodbyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverwherever/gifts">neverwherever</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from the Maeve Kelly song Runaways, not particularly accurate to Kurapika but hard to listen to with him in mind. </p><p>For my poor, darling roommate who, as I was writing this, listened to me ramble about Whale Falls for a whole 30 minutes. I love you and your presence is ever a blessing.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There is a moment, when Kurapika’s shoe meets the gangplank of the Black Whale, where his gaze lingers on the froth of the ocean and he sees it as a sea of shards. Lots of points of semi-clear water, reaching up to throw mist on his toes. Kurapika looks at the ocean and thinks of why he’s here. He thinks of how far away his forest home lies, how he very well may never see it again. <em> On this trip </em> Kurapika thinks <em> I might die. This might be the end of my journey. This might be the end of me. </em> And he thinks about the one hundred and twenty seven bodies buried in mass graves beneath the dirt and the moss and the trees. If he dies on this trip he doesn’t know where he’d be buried. Granted, if he died on land he doesn’t know where he’d be buried either. It’s not like anyone remembers the Kurta: the prayers they’d say to his body, the forest earth where that body should lie. He felt a hand on his shoulder, more urging then comforting. </p><p>“You alright?” Behind him was Bill, his wild eyes, his jet of hair and behind him was queen Oito, her darling daughter asleep in her arms. Kurapika looked at him, at the queen, at Woble.</p><p>“I was surveying.” He said, clearing all the sentimentality from his voice. The ocean below him rolled, waves gentle. Bill didn’t mention that he hadn’t been looking at the boat, just put a kind pressure to his place on Kurapika’s shoulder, leading him up into the journey. </p><p>-</p><p>Before Pairo’s eyes started going, before Pairo’s eyes started going because of Kurapika, because Kurapika needed saving, Kurapika and Pairo would explore their jungle home. He and Pairo would heist one of Pairo’s uncles’ Ostrichickens and dart throughout the forest of Lukso. Bouncing on the Ostrichicken’s back from its arrhythmic steps they’d laugh and hiccup, holding each other tight lest they fall. The jungles of the Lukso Province were filled with secrets and swimming holes and cliffs and strange plants that coiled into everytime-perfect spirals. </p><p>“Kurapika,” Pairo asked “what do you think it’s like in a desert?” </p><p>“Dry,” he said “and hot” he grabbed Pairo’s wrist where it lay on his stomach, holding him close as the Ostrichicken went over a ditch with a particularly hard hop.</p><p>“Do you want to go to one?”</p><p>“Yes. Will you come with me?” </p><p>-</p><p>Kurapika thinks </p><p>
  <em> If I die on this journey would that be a bad thing? </em>
</p><p>He thinks</p><p><em> Is it right that even if I can never rejoin my home, my people, that I rejoin them in fate? </em> </p><p>-</p><p>Kurapika remembers, Pairo used to play the harp. Or it wasn’t a harp, it was a traditional Kurta instrument with strings and a bent willow frame that was held differently then a harp and was played with ferns tucked into the strings to change the notes one plucked from them. </p><p>“Do you want me to play you something before bed?” Melody asked him as she left the Nostrade estate one night, the slim sort of frown on her lips conveying that it was something she would prefer to do. That she saw Kurapika as a man without sleep, without rest. But Kurapika was not restless this evening, but wistful. The tunes of his homeland flitting through his mind. He was beginning to forget their songs. </p><p>He almost asked “do you know anything Kurta” but stopped himself. She wouldn’t, and with her flute it wouldn’t be right anyway. Kurta songs were written for trios, harp, drum, and upright bass. He’d already forgotten the names for the instruments, replaced with societal analogs, names his mother would have laughed at. </p><p>“No Kurapika,” she’d say, and correct him in their mutual tongue. He’s afraid for the day he’ll forget her voice. He wonders if it’d already come, replaced with another and he hadn’t even noticed. </p><p>“No thank you,” He said to Melody “I’m sure I’ll get to sleep fine.”</p><p>-</p><p>Kurapika has not slept, not properly, in a long long time. It is no different now, this is not sleep. He does not dream, he does not rest, and he does not think. It is as though, for nine hours, Kurapika too was as dead as his family. As he awakes from his nen-forced blackout he feels like he has fallen off of a cliff- his center of gravity is off and his bones. His bones ache. Deep and hard and painful. As he raises into a crouch, bent on at his knees and resting his weight on his toes, he teeters forward. Bill catches him with a hand to the shoulder, professional, concerned. </p><p>“How long was I out?” Kurapika asked and Bill, unafraid of the eyes of the devil that shine beside him, took his hand from the fabric of Kurapika’s suit. </p><p>“Nine hours.” He said, worry laced into where his tongue touched his teeth to say it. Kurapika froze, in thought, the endless swirls of mind games that were known to consume him after the shortest of phrases. Kurapika, on the black whale, knew he had to be ten steps ahead of everybody at all times or he would certainly die. This though, this overuse of his ability, this understanding of what emperor time did to his body, the toll of this revenge and his love not lost over this time but warped into something that was vicious in his memories, death felt like it was coming for Kurapika, closer then it had been in a long time. And how many times had he seen its shape at his back, seen the shine of its lure in his face, felt its teeth as it loomed to close its jaws around him. He turns his thoughts from the certainty and his duty falls right back into his mind. </p><p>“The queen?” Kurapika asks, and Bill, weary eyed, tells him. </p><p>-</p><p>When Kurapika dreams, which is not often, he dreams of Pairo’s throat. Of his head, severed, his eyes popped out, his body broken and bloody and laying beside his parents, Kurapika’s parents. Of hands cutting off his air supply, careful hands, ensuring that he was irate as he passed, that he died with that enviable scarlet in his pupils. It had to be close, personal, violent or else his eyes would be the same dull hazel they were naturally.  The clouded, injured eyes Kurapika remembered. They were brilliant when they were scarlet. Kurapika’s heart rate sores. He feels in his blood Pairo’s rage. Pairo was always the calmer, politer, more accommodating of the two of them. But Pairo’s memories incite a cruelness in Kurapika’s veins. </p><p>-</p><p>Bill asks Kurapika. </p><p>“Why did you come here?” </p><p>“It was a job,” Kurapika responds “I responded to the advertisement.” </p><p>“Hm.” Bill says, and he means, <em> I don’t believe you. </em> Kurapika appreciates that he is too kind to say it. </p><p>-</p><p>Kurapika sees Pairo in a child in a red shirt on the side of the road, in a man with a jovial voice who insults Kurapika in much the same way Pairo used to, in his eyes in the mirror when they are angry and red. He hears Pairo’s calming words, his tricks and distractions to help Kurapika come down from an angry precipice. Pairo is never there. Kurapika, day after day, begins to believe that he truly is the final Kurta. He only wishes it wasn’t him. </p><p>-</p><p>After the Kurta massacre, Kurapika reads, the forest was burnt to the ground. There is nothing left of the Lukso forest but the new-growth buds of lichen and coniferous trees. If he were to visit his home, if he were to attempt to lay his clan members to proper rest, he would not recognize the place. </p><p>-</p><p>Tsieriednich has Pairo’s head in a glass box. It is something beautified, an item to be displayed on a mantelpiece. Kurapika has had plenty of experience with the artefacts of flesh collectors at this point, but this? Kurapika’s vision is ruby without his permission, his breaths are erratic, burning beneath his ribs beside his violent urge to hurt and to maim and to avenge his fallen brethren and to take Pairo’s skull into his arms and hold him close as though he were still alive is a desire, a deep rooted unforgettable desire, to break himself from this madness and crawl his way back home. Underneath it all, the rage and the pain and sorrow and the mourning Kurapika remembers a young boy, out into the world on his own, on nights scared and shivering begging for the place he could return to. Kurapika holds this boy inside him, will never relinquish the pain of nowhereness. So, as he strikes towards Tsiriendnich it is not the anger for his people, the indignation for Pairo, nor the promise of revenge, it is a boy, twelve, sent into a world that wasn’t made for him, crying to be remembered.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I think about death as an angler fish! Leave me a comment about darling Kurapika if you were into this.<br/>And if you're a social media kind of person catch me on twitter @poetforprofit</p></blockquote></div></div>
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